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Our coalition expressed deep disappointment that the state budget deal reached by Governor Jerry Brown and legislative leadership fails to include $50 million to pay for medically necessary autism services for children in Medi-Cal. The funding, which was previously approved by the Senate Budget Committee but was voted down Monday by the Budget Conference Committee, would have provided Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) services for children with autism who are enrolled in Medi-Cal.read more »

As California moves forward with implementing the Affordable Care Act and continues its economic and budget recovery, now is the time to make the promise of health reform real for California families by ensuring children have access to the care they need to grow up healthy. While the Governor’s May Revise fully embraces the Medi-Cal expansion, it woefully misses the mark when it comes to protecting the health of the state's children, a striking and short-sighted omission for California's futureread more »

A coalition of children’s health and autism support organizations today stated that hundreds of California’s children are suffering from disruptions in critical health care services due to the state’s transition from the Healthy Families Program to Medi-Cal. In particular, children in Healthy Families who had been receiving standard therapy for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are being denied these services in Medi-Cal, often with less than a week’s notice.read more »

An unknown number of autistic children transitioning from Healthy Families to Medi-Cal were informed that they will no longer be able to access critical behavioral health services once enrolled into a Medi-Cal health plan. Families who called the state’s help lines have been unable to get definitive answers about how to resolve the problem and access these services. Children’s advocates are frustrated by the state’s lack of planning and attention to this issue, despite the fact that this specific concern about loss of services for autistic children has been raised many times over the past several months. Advocates, relieved that the state has now begun to address these problems, call upon the Administration to work quickly to identify and closely manage affected children in order to maintain services and assure continuity of care. read more »

Today, children’s health advocates gave the State of California a C-minus on the transition of 875,000 children from the Healthy Families Program to Medi-Cal. The advocates noted that while the state is doing fine in some aspects of the transition, the state’s inadequate planning and monitoring processes raise concerns that it may be ill-prepared to prevent children from falling through the cracks as they move to Medi-Cal in the more complicated phases later this year. read more »

A coalition of leading children’s health advocates in California issued the following statement in response to Governor Brown’s 2013-14 budget proposal released today, calling to a greater investment in children's health care.read more »

A coalition of California health advocates and providers today released a statement calling on Governor Brown and the Legislature to renew a critical revenue source – a Managed Care Organization (MCO) assessment that could raise approximately $350 million per year – to address the health care needs of children.read more »

California plans to start moving children from the Healthy Families Program into Medi-Cal on January 1. Advocates highlight the importance of assuring children’s health care is not disrupted.read more »

According to a new report by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families, the rate of uninsured children in California declined 1.5 percent between 2009 and 2011, which ranks the state 12th in the nation for the decline in the child uninsured rate. Despite this decline, in 2011, some 8 percent, or approximately 745,000, of California children still lacked health insurance, higher than the national average of 7.5 percent and ranking the state 35th in the nation.read more »